THE GHOSTS
OF N-SPACE
First published in Great Britain in 1995 by Doctor Who Books
an imprint of Virgin Publishing Ltd 332 Ladbroke Grove
London W10 5AH
Copyright © Barry Letts 1995
The right of Barry Letts to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
'Doctor Who' series copyright © British Broadcasting Corporation 1995
ISBN 0 426 20440 9
Cover illustration by Alister Pearson Typeset by Galleon Typesetting, Ipswich Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berks
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
One
Don Fabrizzio had great hopes that it would not be necessary to kill Max Vilmio. But he was very angry with him.
There had been a long period of peace amongst the Mafia Families of northern Sicily. The long drawn‐out feuds of the fifties had been settled largely by respect for the supremacy of Don Fabrizzio (established with a ruthlessness unmatched by the toughest of his rivals). The areas of control and the parcelling out of the various enterprises were as he had decreed; and the result had been a time of amity – and prosperity for all concerned.
And then the upstart Vilmio had bought this island – always understood to be within the Fabrizzio domain, although it was of little account in his extensive business empire – and used it as a base to make forays onto the mainland which were becoming more than could be tolerated.
takeover was his ultimate aim. But now he had gone too far, running the Don’s emissaries off the island as if they were the chicken‐shit bully‐boys of a Main Street Boss from the Mid‐West.
His arrogance was beyond reason, thought the old man. Although the purpose of this visit was quite clear, he had not even bothered to provide himself with bodyguards.
He gazed thoughtfully at the massive figure before him – and at the man in the monk’s habit standing discreetly in the background by the great open fireplace. Vilmio had addressed him as Nico. Not a priest, then. A lay brother, some hanger‐on. Well, he needn’t think having him present would save him if the decision had to be taken.
‘You understand, my boy,’ said the Don gently, ‘that it is out of the love and respect I bear for your father, may his soul rest in peace, that I come to see you personally.’
The giant Max smiled a little too readily back at the old man. ‘It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the Isola di San Stefano Maggiore, Don Fabrizzio. All of you,’ he added, giving a glance to the cold‐faced aide carrying a document case who stood at the capo‐mafioso’s shoulder and to the two bodyguards behind.
The result of a Mafia quarrel? Possibly. Yet Don Fabrizzio’s enquiries had indicated that Vilmio had always held himself apart from the business of his adopted Family in New York.
‘In order that there might be no possibility of misunderstanding,’ the Don said, as he tried to settle his bones into the corners of the starkly fashionable chair, ‘it seemed advisable for me to make quite sure that you realize the help that we can give you – not only in my little corner, or indeed in Sicily as a whole, but throughout Italy. Rome has been known to frown on enterprises such as yours. The more friends you have the better.’
The large face opposite was still smiling, although the eyes were hard. ‘Enterprises such as mine? You seem very sure that you know what I’m going to do, Don Fabrizzio.’ The Don held up his hands in a placatory gesture. ‘Business is business,’ he said. ‘I make no moral judgement.’
‘In order that there might be no possibility of misunderstanding,’ Vilmio said, ‘what do you reckon I’m up to?’
Max Vilmio looked up in irritation. ‘Maggie!’ he said. ‘I told you we were not to be disturbed. Get lost.’
The blonde head shook at him reprovingly as she surveyed up the room. ‘I know you Eyeties. Can’t get going till you’ve had your fix!’ She giggled. ‘Hark at me! Still, I should know.’
She dumped the tray of little espresso cups onto the glass coffee table, so incongruous in the ancient palazzo with its velvet drapes and Moorish rugs.
‘We’re talking business here, babe,’ said Vilmio. ‘You got it, Daddy-o. I’m gone already. See? Watch me go!’
So the four men watched her backside retreat to the door, where she turned to give them a wink and a farewell wiggle.
The coffee was ignored. The Don, no longer smiling, turned‐to the thin man by his side. ‘Consigliere,’ he said. ‘Show Signor Vilmio the contract.’
Max glanced at the sheet of paper he was offered. He seemed unimpressed. ‘A lot about percentages, yeah. Not much detail of what I can expect in return.’
Max Vilmio burst out laughing. ‘I’m not some punk running a liquor store in the Bronx. Protection against your hoods? Come on!’
The old man shook his head. ‘We are suggesting nothing so crude, Signore. Your – your line of business is well established in these parts. You can expect jealousies to arise which might have unfortunate consequences. With our contacts we can –’
But he was interrupted. ‘My line of business? You’re guessing again, Don Fabrizzio.’
‘I think not.’
‘Well? What exactly am I up to? In a word.’
Fabrizzio looked at him with a slight frown. The man was not playing the game according to the rules. The Sicilian subtlety which ruled all such negotiations should forbid such plain speaking.
‘In a word?’ he said at last. ‘Whores.’
Elspeth looks in horror at the still smoking automatic in
her hand and unwillingly lifts her eyes to the impossible
sight of the old man’s body. How could such a thing have
happened? And what is she going to do now?
The noise of the door heralds the arrival of the person
she fears most in all the world, the erstwhile drug‐smuggler
visiting his Irish aunt and happens to have heard the shot as
he…
‘Oh phooey,’ said Sarah Jane Smith aloud. ‘That’s just plain silly.’ Yet Garcia had got to turn up and catch Elspeth or she’d never get them in bed together.
Standing up, she clasped her fingers behind her back and stretched her arms to ease the stiffness in her shoulders. The dapple of light on the wall, reflected from the ripples in the harbour, reminded her that she was supposed to be on holiday.
Abandoning Elspeth to her fate, she wandered over to the window and perched on the sill, closing her eyes to the glare of the Mediterranean sun, and leant back, revelling in the coolness of the spring breeze on her skin.
It wasn’t as though it was the only time it had happened. Every time she’d been with the Doctor in his TARDIS – back into the past, chasing the Sontaran; the trip to Parakon with its giant bats and butcher toads; and now the Exxilon affair – she’d come back convinced she’d got the story of her life, only to have Clorinda spike it on the grounds of implausibility. And when even she had to admit the truth of the dinosaurs – they’d been all over London, for Pete’s sake – the Brig pulled rank as officer commanding the United Nations Intelligence Task Force in the UK, slapped a D-notice on the inside story and Sarah was scuppered again.
It was definitely last straw time; time to get out and make a fresh start. She didn’t care if she never saw Clorinda again. Or the Doctor and the Brigadier for that matter.
So when Jeremy, a colleague on the magazine, suggested that she come on a (purely platonic) holiday with him – a ticket was going begging, Jeremy’s Mama (as he called her) having cried off when she realized the dates clashed with the local horse show – she jumped at the chance to get away from it all.
hailed by the critics as the novel of the century) was turning out to be a rather more sticky job than she’d expected. She hadn’t even finished a rough storyline yet and they’d been in Sicily for over a week.
She opened her eyes and squinted at the lively scene below the hotel window, a kaleidoscope of colour (even though it was so early in the season) as the tourists paraded their holiday garb, or sat guzzling at the cheap and cheerful trattorias which lined the front. Across the harbour the little steamer which was the smallest of the boats which ran a ferry service to the islands to the north was puffing its way in, giving an occasional plaintive toot as it threaded its way through the sailing boats.
It certainly all looked considerably more attractive than the excessively flowered wallpaper behind her keyboard which had yielded such a small amount of inspiration all morning.
Go for a sail. That was the thing. Meet Jeremy for lunch as usual; a pizza, a glass of vino and then ho for the rolling main. Or whatever. Let Elspeth get on with it. She and Garcia deserved one another.
‘But I don’t like sailing!’
‘Don’t be so bossy! You’re not my sister, you know.’ ‘Thank heavens for small mercies.’
‘Well, if I’m sick, you’ve only got yourself to blame.’ It was a perfect day for sailing; as calm as the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, with a brisk breeze from the west. Jeremy soon stopped grumbling. In fact, once they were well and truly under way and making for the middle of the harbour, he was sitting up, pink‐cheeked and tousle‐ haired, with a grin on his face like a puppy’s on its first walk.
And as for Sarah…
Sarah was good at sailing, having undergone a period of intensive tuition (just after she left school) from a sub‐ lieutenant in the Royal Navy who’d called her ‘old thing’ and sworn undying love before thankfully disappearing Hong Kong‐wards. Sarah, heart‐whole and sun‐tanned, had spent the rest of the summer in a dinghy and a glow of satisfaction.
she cried internally. What do I care how you get to Scunthorpe?
But her concentration had hiccupped. A gust of wind from an unlikely quarter swung the boat to starboard, revealing (what the sail had been hiding) that the little island ferry on its way out of harbour was bearing down on her menacingly and honking like a demented goose.
‘Look out!’ cried Jeremy, unhelpfully.
There was only one thing to do and Sarah instinctively did it. Continuing the swing to starboard, she scrambled back into the boat ready to wear round, sheeting in to prevent the boom whipping across when the wind caught the leech of the sail from astern. She glanced up at the bow of the ferry, only yards away. She should just about make it.
It was at that moment that she saw the Brigadier, leaning over the rail.
She didn’t collide with the steamer. But the shock was enough to make her miss the moment of gybing. The boom was flung across with the full force of the wind, narrowly missing her head; the boat heeled to port, failed to recover, and Sarah and Jeremy were in the water.
strict necessity for tutor and pupil to help each other to get dry.
Long before Sarah had sailed the boat back to the quayside, the afternoon sun had dried her and Jeremy even more thoroughly, but he showed no sign of appreciating that righting an upturned boat was all part of the fun. He seemed to have turned against the whole thing and grumpily refused to believe that she’d seen the Brig.
‘Why on earth should he come here?’ ‘Why shouldn’t he?’
‘I bet it wasn’t him. Was he wearing his uniform?’ ‘Well, no. He was wearing a blazer, I think.’ ‘There you are, then.’
‘He wouldn’t dress up in uniform if he was on holiday, you twit. It was a Briggish sort of blazer, anyway.’
‘A tourist centre, a leisure complex; an island – two islands – I am negotiating to buy San Stefano Minore as well. Two islands, two centres, catering between them for all the desires of every sort of holidaymaker. Strictly legitimate. If the hostesses are friendly and obliging, what business is it of mine? Or yours? Why should I need your help? Or…’ he paused. His voice became hard. ‘Or your protection?’
Don Fabrizzio’s voice was equally hard. ‘A bordello, a whore‐house, a leisure complex – what’s it matter what you call it?’ His voice softened, almost pleading with the American to see sense. ‘You are a rich man already – a multi‐millionaire if my information is correct. If you are wise, you will devote some of your profits to the cultivation of goodwill. You will not be the loser.’
Vilmio rose to his feet and spoke down to the little Don from his quite considerable height. The contempt in his voice was now overt. ‘A multi‐millionaire? You’re wrong. I got to be a multi‐billionaire over three years ago. Do you think I did it by giving away my profits? Or by letting myself be kicked around by some two‐bit Godfather with cowshit between his toes?’
He rose to his immaculately shod feet, knowing that the two men at the back of him would now be alerted for his signal.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘You have been offered the hand of friendship and you have chosen to spurn it. I am sad. When I think of my friend, your father –’
‘You are a sentimental old woman – just as he was. He wasn’t my father, and you know it. I helped the guy with a business problem is all – and he welcomed me into the Family. It suited me to go along with his garbage for a while. And now he’s feeding the worms.’
Don Fabrizzio looked into the sneering face. The world would be well rid of this pezzo di merda.
‘Goodbye, Signore,’ he said quietly.
Max Vilmio turned his massive back. But as the Don opened his mouth to give the word, the big man swung like an Olympic discus thrower, his metal arm flailing out and round full into the Don’s face, crushing the front of his skull into a bloody pulp.
The monkish figure by the fireplace watched impassively. He had not moved or made a sound.
Two
When Sarah restarted work the next day on the Greatest British Novel of the Twentieth Century, she still had no answer to the embarrassment of Garcia’s opportune arrival at the scene of the shooting. So she decided to act on the principle that if she ignored it, it might go away. This proved an excellent strategy. Everything fell into place with surprising complaisance. By midday the end of the storyline was hull down on the horizon.
Just a few loose ends, thought Sarah. She could tie everything up as neatly as any gift‐wrapped parcel and then go back to sort out Garcia and his too convenient relative.
But as she neared the end, she found herself slowing down. If it was all going to work, she had to decide who was the old man’s real heir; and the only character she had left who fitted the bill was his gardener – and that was an even more unlikely coincidence than Garcia’s fortuitous stroll down Scunthorpe High Street.
Very funny, mate, she said to her unconscious muse. Laugh? She could have died laughing, if she hadn’t been so near to tears.
There was no sun today. Matching the grumpiness of Sarah’s mood, the lowering sky was set off by the rising wind. And that went with her general feeling of rattiness, didn’t it? Maybe there was something in the good old pathetic fallacy, after all. Yeah, and that’s what she was, too. Pathetic. Just because she’d written the odd magazine piece that was worth a nod, what made her think she could –
At which point she rounded the corner of the hotel, head down against the bluster of the incipient gale, and ran straight into Brigadier Lethbridge‐Stewart.
Afterwards, Sarah castigated herself for not greeting him with something a little more intelligent – or cool at least – than ‘Whoops!’ Not that his own remark was very much more sophisticated. ‘Miss Smith – ah – Sarah!’ he said, as he released the arm he had grabbed to steady her.
‘I thought it was you,’ she said. ‘Yesterday. On the boat.’
‘Mm. It is Sarah, isn’t it?’
The Brigadier peered uncertainly at her as though she had grown a ginger beard or something since they last met.
‘Of course it is,’ she said.
He turned, shaking his head, and made his way past her. Sarah watched him go. What on earth was the matter with the man?
Even the pleasure of the tacit ‘told‐you‐so’ to Jeremy (who still didn’t believe her) was not enough to erase the Brigadier’s extraordinary behaviour from her mind. It remained with her throughout a plate of penne amatriciana, so large she couldn’t finish it, and a half litre of vino rosso which she irritably shared with her sceptical companion.
But then, as they were paying the bill, vindication: a cry from Jeremy, ‘Hey, look! There he is!’
She swung round to see the man himself, carrying a suitcase now, boarding the ferry. He’d plainly spotted her; in fact, he caught her eye; and with a strange, almost shifty, expression on his face vanished below.
It was too much to bear. ‘Come on!’ she said and started across the cobbled hard towards the quayside with the protesting Jeremy scuttling after.
‘But what are we doing here? We don’t even know where we’re going!’ he said indignantly once they were safely on board the boat, having very nearly missed it.
of a truffle pig if you’re going to find stories that are worth anything. There’s something strange going on, and I’m going to find out what.’
‘A truffle pig?’ said Jeremy. ‘You’re just nosy.’
‘That’s right,’ she agreed cheerfully. ‘Got anything better to do?’ she added, grabbing hold of the rail as a particularly insistent lurch threatened to send her flying. ‘Thinking of doing a spot of sunbathing, were you?’
Some two hours later, even Sarah could have thought of a host of better things to do. She’d quickly found the Brigadier, morosely sipping a large scotch in the shelter of the little bar, and managed to slip away again without his noticing her.
Rejoining her reluctant colleague, who was already starting to turn pale, she’d studied the map on the wall of the main saloon, trying to guess which of the islands the Brigadier might be making for. Lipari, the biggest, was the most likely, she decided.
the little islands of San Stefano Maggiore and San Stefano Minore away to the west. She pointed this out to the inert body lying on the bench seat opposite and was rewarded by a grunt; and, truth to tell, by the time they were bumpily coming alongside the jetty which formed the eastern boundary of the little harbour at Porto Minore, her enthusiasm for the expedition was hardly greater than his.
‘Wakey, wakey,’ she said. ‘We’re there.’ ‘Where?’ a faint voice enquired.
‘Wherever.’ She surveyed the face attached to the voice (which was now a tasteful shade of eau‐de‐nil). ‘You look ghastly,’ she said in an objective way. ‘Sort of dead‐ish.’
‘I wish I were,’ came the nearly inaudible reply.
As Brigadier Lethbridge‐Stewart trudged heavily up the path through the orange trees whipping back and forth in the rising wind – it was so narrow and convoluted that it could hardly be accounted a road, even though it was the only way up the hill from the harbour – the plurality of worries which rumbled through his mind conflated into one overwhelming undefinable emotion: a sort of gloomy frustrated desperate rage.
prep school – and Uncle was a middle‐aged man then. But now! You only had to look at him, with his shock of spiky grey hair, hopping around like a cross between an aged Puck and an Italian Mr Punch – Pulcinello, they called him, didn’t they?
But surely his sort of pottiness couldn’t be hereditary, could it? But anyway, if it could, he was hardly in the direct line. Even if it were true that he was the old codger’s only living relative… Good grief, as if he wanted to take on the responsibility of being Lord of the Manor – Barone, or whatever – of a tiny little island in the middle of nowhere!… even if it were true, it was a pretty tenuous connection. Not even a great uncle, really. His grandmother’s second cousin – so what did that make him? Third cousin three times removed or something ridiculous. If it was in the blood, though…
On the other hand, some sorts of craziness were catching, weren’t they? Folie a deux. That’s what they called it.
or wearing a T-shirt – with ‘Please note: I am not a figment of your imagination’ written on it; and even if she had, what was the guarantee that that wouldn’t have been a hallucination too?
The Brigadier gave up. He stopped for a breather and thankfully put down the ever heavier case. He’d never intended to stay at the castello. When his ninety‐two‐year‐ old relative had appealed to him for help, he’d decided that noblesse oblige was all very well – blood thicker than water and all that – but it would be safer to stay on the mainland and just pay a visit. He’d got his own life to live.
With a sigh, he picked up the case in his other hand and resumed his unhappy progress towards the castle which crowned the hill – or mountain as the locals called it – which dominated the little island, falling away to the sea in an unscaleable cliff on the north side.
He had to stay as long as it was necessary. After all, he could hardly leave the old fellow to face the unspeakable Max Vilmio all by himself.
through the big Arabian Nights sort of archway that led through the perimeter wall of the castle on the southern corner.
Sarah nipped after him, stopping in the shelter of the gatehouse, staying close to the massive wooden gate that had clearly not been closed for an eon, and was just in time to see him vanish into the castle itself and close the heavy iron‐bound door firmly behind him.
She moved into the big open courtyard – the bailey, they called it, didn’t they? she thought, digging into her own remote past; though the castle didn’t really match with what she’d been taught at primary school.
It was a bit of a mongrel, she decided. Its outer wall, which was in the form of a diamond, with a defensive tower on each of the east and west points, was definitely of Arab construction. It had different out‐buildings all around, though quite a few were derelict. The stables, for example, clearly hadn’t had any occupants for years.
But the main building, which rose enormous and menacing into the stormy sky ahead of her, was plainly a Norman keep – even though larger windows had been installed to turn it into a house rather than a fortress, and a Renaissance campanile (or maybe clock tower) was sticking up incongruously from its rear.
‘So what do we do now?’
Sarah didn’t answer. It was a rhetorical question, designed to needle her, on a par with all the other whispered grumbles she’d been forced to listen to all the way up the steep pathway. In any case, she didn’t know the answer.
She was beginning to feel rather foolish. After all, what business had she to pry into the Brig’s private life?
Jeremy was no longer bothering to whisper. Apart from anything else, the wind was rapidly turning into a full gale. ‘I’m hungry and I’m cold – and if you ask me –’ he started to say in a petulant voice.
‘Okay, okay. You win! We’ll go back. Honestly, it’s like taking a three‐year‐old out for a walk. We’ll catch the next boat. Right?’
This was easy to say, but when they had struggled through the buffeting wind back down to the village, the bleak information on the wall near the jetty was that the little ship visited only twice a day; and it was clear that none of the big tourist boats bothered to come out to the islands of San Stefano. They were stuck until the next morning.
But Jeremy refused to be jollied along. ‘Where would you suggest?’ he said bitterly, peering through the gathering twilight at the firmly closed trattoria, with its ice‐cream parlour, and the blank faces of the shuttered houses. There was not a person in sight and the only light was a single bare bulb by the harbour steps.
It soon became clear that the Italian tradition of hospitality to the stranger was in abeyance on San Stefano Minore. Hearty knocks on several doors produced no result other than the lonely cry of a scared child and a menacing shout of ‘Se ne vada!’
By the time they had retraced their steps to the castello and crossed the broken stones (with grass growing through the cracks) of the bleak emptiness between the gate tower and the heavy front door of the keep – what else could they do? She’d just have to face the Brigadier and apologize – Sarah wasn’t sure whether the tears in her eyes were really the effect of the harsh wind. Darkness had descended as suddenly, it seemed, as nightfall in Africa the time she’d travelled from the Caribbean to the old Slave Coast on the Voodoo Witch‐Doctor story which got her the job on
Metropolitan.
He’d probably catch pneumonia and die or something, and then she’d have to organize flying his coffin home and all; and what would she tell his Mama?
She pulled the bell again. There was no reply. She couldn’t even hear the jingle‐jangle of the bell inside. There was no sound at all, bar the distant howling of a village dog, and the soughing of the wind in the trees. But then…
‘What was that?’ said Jeremy, his head jerking round in fright.
A cry of alarm; a shriek of fear; a voice calling a name in a frenzy of desperation.
‘It came from round there,’ said Sarah, and set off towards the left side of the keep.
‘Come back!’ cried Jeremy as she disappeared.
There was nobody in sight round the corner. But the moonlight was bright enough for her to make out what seemed to be a garden wall behind the house. Where it joined on to the back wall of the perimeter, the whole thing seemed to have collapsed. It was from down there that the voice seemed to be coming.
Her foot turned on a loose stone and she fell, rolling down the decline to her left, where the ground fell away in a five‐hundred‐foot drop to the sea.
Pulling herself back from the abyss, she lay clutching at the stones in a spasm of terror. But the voice came yet again, crying the name in a crescendo of despair.
Forcing herself to move, she pulled herself to the very top – in time to catch a glimpse of a figure, a girl in a white frock, plunging over the cliff to a certain death.
Scrambling down the stones, careless of painful scuffs and certain bruises, Sarah made her way to the edge. Clinging frantically to the coarse grass to save herself from the tearing wind, she tried to look down. The moonlight showed her the sheer rock‐face and the cruel breakers smashing themselves against the massive stones which had fallen from the broken wall. But there was no sign of the white dress.
Through the howl of the gale, she became aware of another sound, an inhuman cry, a high‐pitched snarl. Still hanging on for her very life, she managed to turn her head enough to see the cause: crouching on the stones behind her, a glowing creature half ape, half carrion bird, reaching out with impossibly extended scaly arms to seize her in its vulture claws.
Three
Much to the. Brigadier’s surprise, the arrival of the TARDIS did not seem to upset Uncle Mario at all. But then, to one who took for granted the comings and goings of the assorted phantoms he’d described, one more dramatic materialization was probably neither here nor there.
Mario had erupted into the Brigadier’s bedroom as he was grimly unpacking his suitcase, wondering how long he would have to extend his unpaid leave from UNIT. Family responsibilities were all very well, but if the old man should die – correction! When the old man died he would be the new Barone, with all that entailed. Yes, ‘but what did it entail? He could hardly flog the island and leave the islanders to the tender mercies of a thug like Vilmio.
In any case, he quite liked the old beggar, even allowing for a lingering resentment dating back more than three decades. When little Alistair Lethbridge‐Stewart had visited all those years ago, he’d insisted on taking with him a pile of his favourite books (as well as, secretly, his Teddy; as a prep‐school boy, he was supposed to have put away such childish things). But the books were left behind and, in spite of numerous requests, never returned.
He hardly reacted. In the short time he’d known Mario he’d grown accustomed to his abrupt manner of appearing and disappearing.
‘Glad you come back, boy. I was half afraid that… But no, blood is blood. You true Italiano, through and through!’
‘Uncle Mario,’ said the Brigadier wearily, ‘Granny MacDougal was only half Italian, so that makes me one‐ eighth Italian and seven‐eighths Scots.’
‘Never mind,’ replied Mario. ‘You learn to speak proper the Italiano and nobody guess.’
‘And I’m supposed to be over the moon about that?’ ‘Over the moon? Like the cat on the fiddle?’
‘It’s just an expression. An idiom. Used mainly by footballers,’ said the Brigadier drily, putting his underpants neatly into a drawer.
The old man clapped his hands in delight. ‘Ha! Over the moon! Better to kick ball over the moon than up the spout, eh? I learn to speak like real Scottishman before you say Jack Homer!’
It had quickly become clear where he had learnt most of his English. The Brigadier had already reluctantly decided to abandon his claim on the missing books.
– ah – ghosts of yours. It was a pretty bad line, but he said he’d come at once, so he’ll probably catch the morning flight to Palermo and –’
The bony hands were flapping at him urgently. ‘Si, si, si! I must screw my head on more tighter. Yes. I forget. He is here, your Doctor in a blue box. I tell him you acoming, yes?’
With a little agitated skip, he was gone.
‘So I thought I’d better give you a shout. Just on the off chance that I wasn’t going round the bend, you know.’ The Brigadier gave a little laugh to indicate that this was a joke, knowing that he had no chance at all of fooling his friend.
They were having a pre‐dinner drink in the great hall on the first floor of the castello. A dusty, untidily informal museum of a place, with bits and pieces from every period lying about, some probably priceless (as, for instance, an ornate golden cup, standing by the telephone, full of broken pencils, which was decorated with bas‐reliefs depicting the amorous adventures of Zeus), others pure junk.
picture was hanging at a drunken angle some forty‐five degrees from the horizontal.
A large eighteenth‐century dining table took up a certain amount of the hall; and the area around the grand old fireplace had been turned in effect into a cosy sitting room.
It was somehow comforting, thought the Brigadier, to see the white‐haired elegant figure of the Doctor in his elaborately frilled shirt and his velvet jacket standing with his back to the blazing log fire warming the seat of his trousers.
‘My dear Lethbridge‐Stewart,’ he answered, ‘to call me in was probably the most rational thing you’ve ever done. From what you tell me, there is something extremely disturbing going on here.’
He turned to Mario, who was standing with his head on one side like a curious parrot, inspecting the TARDIS, which was parked neatly but incongruously in the comer. ‘Signore – I beg your pardon, Barone –’
Minore, like my father and his fathers before him from the beginning.’
‘And you told the Brigadier, Signore, that you and your forebears have always known the castello to be haunted?’
‘Of course. The lady in white dress, I see her often when I was bambino. But not the little diaboli, the fiends from the pit. They come only now, more and more, the rascals.’
‘And you say you’ve seen them too, Brigadier?’ The Brigadier shifted uneasily. This was the question, wasn’t it? Had he seen them?
‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ he said, ‘and yet, well, I certainly have caught a glimpse of one. At least, I think I have.’ A glimpse! He felt again the full horror of the sight of the – the thing; the slimy tentacles, the blood‐red eyes, the razor teeth. He shuddered.
‘Has anybody else witnessed these phenomena?’ ‘Eh?’ said Mario.
‘The ghosts, the apparitions. Have they been seen by anybody but you and the Brigadier?’
‘Oh, sure. Our servants, they run away like cowardy custard creams, back to village. Only Umberto to cook, to clean all castello, poor old thing.’
‘Aha!’ The old man leapt from his chair like a startled jack‐in‐the‐box, tottering a little as he landed.
What now? ‘You hear?’
The Doctor seemed to have heard something too. But the Brigadier was only aware of the wind whistling through the cracks in the ill‐fitting windows. ‘What is it?’ he said a little testily.’
‘Sssh!’ The Doctor held up a warning hand. ‘There it is again.’
This time he heard it. A scream? A shout? A voice certainly.
‘Come quick! You see her, the lady in white.’
Mario, seemingly the least affected, turned dramatically, indicating with an almost operatic sweep of his arm that they had reached their goal.
But there was no phantasm of the night to be seen. A voice could be heard, certainly, but it was the voice of – yes, there was no question – the voice of young Jeremy of all people, as he slithered and tumbled down the heap of stones to the left, desperately trying to reach…
The Doctor saw her at the same moment: lying on the sloping edge where the grass gave way to blackness, the body of Sarah Jane Smith, limp and defenceless. Her short hair was whipping about her face and her denim shirt slapping and flapping on her body as it struggled to get free; surely the next gust would have her over.
‘Jeremy! Keep back!’ cried the Doctor, running across the courtyard.
. Throwing himself full length onto the slippery grass, he inched himself forward, with the Brigadier hanging onto his ankles as he reached out to the unconscious Sarah and seized her by the arms.
‘Well, I don’t know why you didn’t waste the lot of them,’ said Maggie, squinting into the dressing‐table mirror as she repaired a ravaged set of eyelashes. She could see Max stretched out behind her, eyeing her naked back. ‘The great bum,’ she thought with a sort of contemptuous admiration and leaned forward for her lipstick to give him a better view.
‘You want I should send his Family a telegram? They’ll have got the message quicker this way.’
‘Message? You didn’t give that consigliere guy any message to take back.’
Max smiled unpleasantly. ‘I didn’t?’ ‘What was it then?’
‘Unconditional surrender, that’s what. Like Ike and the Krauts. I’ve got more important things to do than play footsy with a bunch of peasants.
‘And that’s for sure,’ he added, almost to himself. Maggie frowned. His face had taken on the hardness she had grown to fear, an evil determination chilling to see. When he was like this, nobody was safe.
‘Ike? Ike who?’ she said. ‘Ike from the deli?’
‘Sure,’ she said, in relief. She sucked a smear of lipstick from a front tooth. ‘Great tits, though.’
It was only a long time later, when Sarah was safely tucked up in an enormous bed, watching the homely firelight flickering on the high ceiling, that she came to the conclusion that to come out of a faint saying ‘Where am I?’ was probably the oldest cliché in the book.
‘But I never faint. I’ve never passed out in my life,’ she’d said, feebly indignant, to the three anxious faces peering down at her as she struggled out of the mists; and it was then that all such thoughts were swept from her mind by the abrupt remembrance of the reason for her so recently acquired weakness; and she had started shaking anew and allowed the Brigadier to carry her to the warmth of the great hall – for assuredly her legs would not have carried her there.
‘What was it? The thingy in the archway?’
‘I mean, it wasn’t a real monster, like the ones on Parakon. It just sort of melted away.’
‘It was real enough, Jeremy,’ said the Doctor. ‘The fact that it vanished before it could do Sarah any harm only means that there isn’t enough power coming through yet. And that means that I may still be in time.’
‘In time for what?’ said the Brigadier. ‘What exactly is going on, for Pete’s sake?’
‘On the other hand,’ continued the Doctor to Jeremy, quite ignoring the irritated Brigadier, ‘in a sense it’s no more real than an image in a dream. But then that applies to all of us, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Er, yes. I mean, no. That is, to be honest, I –’
‘Well, it certainly doesn’t apply to me,’ said the Brigadier, ‘and frankly I can’t see that it applies to any of us.
Sarah took a sip of her milk. It was no good feeling cross with the Doctor when he talked in that elliptical fashion. It was just the way he was. No doubt he would tell them what he meant in his own good time.
‘And yet you were quite prepared to believe that Miss Smith was a product of your own over‐heated brain, when you met her this morning.’
admit,’ he went on, ‘that it is the most impossible coincidence that we should have bumped into each other.’
‘Impossible? Evidently not, since it happened. In any case, you’re leaving out the likelihood of its being a simple case of synchronicity.’
Here we go again, thought Sarah. ‘Synchronicity?’ said the Brigadier.
‘The principle that a coincidence may happen without any causal link, and yet still be of significance. Whole systems of philosophy have been based on it. The I Ching, for example, as the chap who coined the word pointed out when we were discussing the question a few years ago. Clever fellow, Carl.’
‘You mean, we were destined to meet?’
‘Fatalism might be considered a cruder version of a similar viewpoint, certainly.’
Sarah felt her eyelids drooping. She carefully placed the nearly empty mug on the little table by her elbow and tried to concentrate on the grown‐ups’ words. The grown‐ups? She grinned at herself and listened.
His voice had the hollow sound of her parents’ voices that she remembered from her childhood – in the car – waking up late in the night on their way to the caravan they used to hire on the Gower coast; and she remembered the time they’d arrived just before the mother and father of all thunderstorms – standing on the clifftop watching the network of lightning over the sea; and she felt again her Dad’s hand resting comfortably on her shoulder as they marvelled at the delicate tracery of the flashes. She put up her hand to touch the warm dry skin she knew so well – and felt a scaly sliminess that brought a scream to her throat which couldn’t escape; and as the claws dug deep into her flesh, her muscles convulsed into a spasm of terror; and she woke up.
Four pairs of eyes were turned on her. She must have cried out. ‘I’m – I’m sorry,’ she managed to gasp. She started to shake again.
Maggie was only pretending to be asleep, as she often did. But even so she didn’t hear Nico come into the room.
‘Well?’ she heard Max ask.
‘You were right,’ the thin sad voice replied. ‘The top men of the four Families.’
‘All in the same building?’ ‘In the same room.’ ‘And?’
‘War.’
She heard Max heave himself out of bed. ‘Great,’ he said. ‘Then you know what to do.’ There was quite a long pause before Nico answered. ‘Please, Signore,’ he said, ‘don’t ask me. I beg you.’ Maggie peeped at the tortured face from beneath her eyelids. Max was enjoying himself.
‘Poor Nico,’ he said. ‘How you do suffer. But then, if you don’t fry them…’
Fry them? Maggie’s eyes nearly popped wide open. Was Max asking him to torch the nineteen top men from the local Mafia?
Max went on, ‘It’s like – damned if you do and damned if you don’t, isn’t it?’ Nico winced at the repetition of the word.
‘You refuse my command?’
Nico shuddered. ‘No, master, no! But if you want –’ ‘What I want is rid of the lot of them. I want the stink of their burning flesh to be history. Got it?’
Four
The clock in the tower struck seven, Sarah’s usual getting up time if she was going for a run on Hampstead Heath (which was its old self again now they’d pulled down Space World); or one hour before her getting up time if she wasn’t, but was on an efficiency jag; or two hours before her time if she’d gone to bed late or didn’t give a damn for any reason.
She opened her eyes, wide awake in an instant, to find a world washed clean; all things made new just for Sarah Jane Smith.
Looking out of the window to savour the sun and the sea and the Sicilian sky she found that she was at the back of the house, overlooking the cloistered courtyard of the night before. Like the part of the house her room was in, it looked as if it had been added at the back of the keep at about the same time as the clock tower.
Together with the walled garden next to it, which must have been beautiful before it was allowed to fall into such a neglected state, it would have made a private sanctuary for the family, away from the public bustle of the bailey yard.
refreshed in mind and body alike, she set off in search of breakfast.
Nosy, that’s what Jeremy called her. Spot on, me old mate, she thought as she seized the opportunity to do a bit of a recce.
The passages were so wide they were more, like galleries; and indeed, the walls were lined with paintings dating from the early Renaissance up to the beginning of the twentieth century, both religious subjects and portraits. One of these, a severe matron in a crinoline with hair parted in the middle and sporting utterly inappropriate ringlets, Widow Twankey style, was nothing but the Brigadier in drag. For the rest of her tour, it kept coming back into her mind, and she’d explode into another fit of giggles.
After she’d summoned up the courage to peep in a room with the door ajar and found it quite empty, she felt a bit bolder and soon established that most of the place was unused. Quite a lot of the rooms were as empty as the first she’d looked into; others were furnished but hiding themselves under modest dust sheets; others were store rooms of one sort or another.
clock tower; and reminded her of her state of imminent starvation.
Unfortunately, once she got into the castle proper, the Norman bit, the long stone corridors all seemed the same, and it was only after nearly half an hour of wandering that the smell of fresh coffee led her to her goal.
‘Buon giorno, signorina,’ said Umberto with a smile, turning from his big stove.
‘Hi there,’ said Jeremy, with his mouth full.
Things were very pleasantly back to normal. Surely last night must have been nothing but a ghastly dream?
‘If I am right, Lethbridge‐Stewart,’ said the Doctor, pausing in the doorway of the TARDIS, ‘the people of this planet face one of the greatest dangers they have ever encountered.’ He disappeared inside.
The Brigadier sighed. The Doctor seemed to say something of the sort every time they worked together; and infuriatingly he always seemed to be proved right. But how pleasant it would be occasionally to be involved in a more parochial type of problem, a ‘little local difficulty’.
The Doctor appeared again, carrying a small box shaped like an old‐fashioned sea‐chest. He dumped it on the large dining table and started rummaging inside.
‘If you had the slightest inkling…’ he started to say, and interrupted himself with an exasperated noise, halfway between a ‘tut’ and a ‘pshaw’.
‘Why is it things never stay where they are put?’ he said. ‘I know full well that I put my ion‐focusing coil back in its place after Bertie Wells borrowed it for his invisibility experiment – ah! Here it is! What did I tell you?’ He gave the Brigadier a disapproving look, at which the recipient felt obscurely guilty, as though it was ultimately his fault that the coil had been mislaid.
‘Of course, young Bertie got it quite wrong in that little tale of his,’ he went on, as he started to fit the small coil into the apparatus he was assembling. ‘An invisible man such as he describes would be stone blind. The light would pass straight through him. With no lens to focus the light rays, and no retina for them to fall on, how could he see? All the invisible creatures I have ever met have relied for sight on parallel sensing of the trace that photons leave in N-Space.’ He looked up and evidently caught the blank look of incomprehension on his listener’s face.
complex insides of the piece of electronic equipment he was putting together.
Another voice spoke. ‘What’s N-Space, Doctor?’ The Brigadier looked round. Of course, Miss Smith – and the boy. ‘Good morning, my dear,’ he said. ‘How are you feeling now?’
‘A lot better for a good night’s sleep,’ she answered. ‘I was just about bombed out of my skull, what with all that brandy and the pill the Doctor gave me. And Signor Callanti has been so kind. We’ve had a super breakfast in that enormous kitchen of his – sort of olive bread, and salami and stuff.’
‘Never seems to have heard of marmalade, though,’ put in Jeremy. ‘Breakfast isn’t breakfast without marmalade.’
‘You have a point,” said the Brigadier. ‘But it’s got to be the right sort of marmalade. The bitter sort.’
The Doctor looked up. ‘Mm. Thick and dark,’ he said. ‘With chunks,’ agreed Sarah.
‘I prefer the jelly stuff myself,’ said Jeremy.
There was a moment of reverential silence as they all remembered past joys.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Sarah, as they hurried after him.
‘To have a peep into N-Space,’ said the Doctor.
When the Doctor said that she might have a glimpse of the creature which had so frightened her the night before, Sarah almost turned on her heel. But when he started to talk about N-Space again, as he led the way through the maze of corridors which led to the rear courtyard, somehow it made it all seem scientific and ordinary.
Apparently every world has a counterpart, intimately connected to it (as close as a pair of clasped hands, the Doctor said). In the normal course of events, it’s impossible to go there, or even to communicate with it, because it’s –
‘– it’s in the fourth dimension!’ said Jeremy brightly. ‘Young man,’ said the Doctor, ‘a lot of nonsense is talked by a lot of people about the fourth dimension – and the fifth and the sixth and the rest, for that matter.’
‘Where is it, then?’ said the Brigadier.
As the Doctor was speaking he was striding through the long, dimly lit stone passageways, never hesitating when offered a choice of several different directions.
‘As I was about to say…’ he went on, and gave Jeremy what Sarah’s Dad used to call a Bite‐Your‐Tongue‐Off‐First look.
‘Sorry,’ murmured Jeremy and clamped his lips tight. ‘As I was about to say, it’s impossible to go to N-Space in the normal course of events or even to communicate with it because of the discontinuity you might expect between the two worlds, which forms a very effective barrier. It can normally only be crossed by the dying.’
‘And ghosts?’ said the Brigadier.
‘I’ll come to that,’ said the Doctor. ‘You see, every sentient being on Earth has an equivalent N-Body, co‐ terminous with the ordinary body.’
‘Whatter‐howmuch?’ muttered Jeremy.
The Doctor, ignoring him, took the middle way of three possible routes, and continued, ‘When somebody dies, the N-Body goes into N-Space. It often seems like a tunnel of darkness leading to a blissful light –’
‘Where exactly are we going, Doctor?’ said the Brigadier.
‘To the cliff‐top where we found Sarah, of course,’ said the Doctor, coming to a standstill.
‘Well, I think we’re lost. This is the third time we’ve been down this corridor.’
‘Nonsense!’ said the Doctor, taking a number of sharp incisive bearings with his penetrating eyes. ‘How could you possibly tell? They all look exactly the same.’
‘Precisely,’ said the Brigadier.
With a glare, the Doctor started off again, but Sarah noticed that, although he didn’t stop talking, he seemed to take rather longer to decide the way.
‘The trouble is,’ he continued, ‘with some people the mind is so attached to the things of Earth that they either can’t give them up, or refuse to. Often they can’t even take it in that their earthly life is over. So instead of just passing through, they get stuck in N-Space. Some of them even try to get back through the barrier; and if they can find the smallest flaw, they’ll come back and try to relive their final moments and make them come right.’
‘Ghosts!’ breathed Sarah.
‘Has anybody any suggestions as to the right way to go?’ he said. ‘Thanks to your strictures, Lethbridge‐Stewart, I’ve become so disorientated that you seem to have got us comprehensively lost!’
It was finally due to Jeremy that they were able to find the way. Not that he had any better idea of where they were than anyone else; in fact, Sarah thought, it was only because he was Tail‐Arse‐Charlie – which, according to her sometime naval companion, was always the nickname of the last ship in line.
Mter wandering for a number of grimly silent minutes, they quite clearly found themselves re‐entering the same little lobby. As they came to a standstill, Jeremy stopped dead, held up a hand and whispered, ‘Listen!’
‘What is it?’ the Brigadier hissed. ‘Ssh! Listen!’
They listened.
‘There’s somebody following us,’ said Jeremy, looking back.
Since they had all taken up positions which hid them from the archway through which they had just arrived, nobody could watch the approach of the person – or thing, thought Sarah with a shudder. The sound of its feet slowed almost to a complete stop before a rush and a scurry brought Sarah’s hand to her mouth ready to stifle an involuntary scream and –
‘Aha!’
The spiky‐haired little figure whirled round to face them. ‘You play hide and go squeak? I win you! I claim my forty fit!’ said Uncle Mario.
‘What is that thing?’ said the Brigadier.
‘What a one you are for names, Lethbridge‐Stewart,’ the Doctor answered. ‘I’ve been too busy building it to hold a christening. I cobbled it up from spare parts for the TARDIS’s navigation circuits. I suppose, if you insist, I could call it a Multi‐Vectored Null‐Dimensional Temporal and Spatial Psycho‐Probe. But I’d much rather not. There we are. That should do it.’
He turned to the little group behind him. ‘Now please understand,’ he said, ‘that anything you see is nothing more than a…’ His voice faded to a puzzled silence.
He began again. ‘Boy,’ he said. ‘Jeremy. What do they call it when they show you a winning goal a couple of times over on the – er – the goggle‐box?’
Sarah almost giggled at his pleasure in finding what he obviously thought was a word from the vernacular of the younger generation. ‘An action replay,’ she said.
‘I say!’ said Jeremy. ‘That’s not fair! I was just about to say that. I can’t help it if I had to think a bit. After all, I’m a rugger man myself; though I must admit I didn’t even get into the house second fifteen, thanks to Banks minor and his –’
‘Jeremy, be quiet,’ said the Brigadier.
‘An action replay. That’s right. Bear that in mind. It’s not happening now. If you see a figure, it’s not even a ghost. It’s just an image; a meta‐spectre. A memory of a memory.’
Saying this, the Doctor raised the probe and pointed it at the crumbling pile of stones on the edge of the cliff: He pulled a sort of trigger. The machine started to hum.
At first, nothing else happened. The hum grew louder – and louder – and Sarah was afraid that this was going to be one of those occasions when the Doctor’s efforts literally blew up in his hands.
But then she noticed that one of the stones in the ruined wall was starting to glow with a strange pearly light, which spread in a zigzag path across the heap, which it enveloped in a flickering aura; and then – oh, then she appeared, the girl in the white dress, clasping her hands in an ecstasy of despair and mouthing an unheard cry. Unsure and unsteady to the eye, like an image glimpsed through the swirling wreaths of a sea‐mist, the slight figure ran towards the edge of the cliff and briefly stood, her arms outstretched to the heavens as if appealing for an impossible succour.
There was nothing she could do; nothing but stand and helplessly watch as the girl deliberately stepped forward and pitched headlong over the cliff.
But then, as Sarah openly wiped away the tear which had fallen onto her cheek, her attention was caught by a startled exclamation from Jeremy. She looked back at the ruined wall.
The shimmering light had extended itself in a series of crazed patterns like frozen lightning; and scattered nearby, spider‐legged centres of cold fire were growing like shoots from a self‐sown plant; and through the new‐born light were appearing glimmerings of phantasms far more fearful than the unhappy wraith they had been watching.
Sarah saw again a flash of the chimera of her living nightmare. She saw glimpses of creatures even more horrific: inside out creatures gnawing at their own entrails; gaping heads, all mouth and fangs, with a maw large enough to swallow a full‐grown pig – or a human; monstrous jellyfish with a hundred human eyes, staring, staring, staring; and more; and more; a menagerie of evil.
would have been. The noise was in her mind, in her head; and she felt herself shaking it gently, as if to clear it of the detritus left by the sights she had seen.
‘Well?’ said the Brigadier.
‘Not at all well,’ replied the Doctor. ‘It’s as I feared. At some time in the past a massive psycho‐physical shock has ruptured the barrier at this point and weakened it drastically – possibly irreparably.’
‘Irreparably? You mean you can’t do anything about it?’
‘If I can find out what caused it in the first place, there might be a chance. I just pray that I have enough time before the moment of catastrophe.’
‘Catastrophe?’
‘I use the word in its strict scientific sense,’ he went on. ‘If a dam is breached, the water comes through in a relative trickle at first; but then small cracks appear around the fracture; the trickle becomes a stream, augmented by even more new trickles; the dam is weakened even further; until – catastrophe: the structure of the dam can’t contain the pressure of the water any longer. It bursts. The countryside is flooded.’
Sometimes, thought Sarah, it wasn’t difficult to believe that the Doctor was over seven hundred years old. He was suddenly looking as if he carried the weight of the centuries on his shoulders.
‘You all saw what has been trying to get through those cracks,’ he said at last. ‘When the catastrophe point is reached and the barrier gives way, this planet will be flooded by all the evil in N-Space; all the fear, greed, anger, hate; all the sheer malevolence the world has experienced since the beginning of time will pour out into the world in an overwhelming torrent.
Five
Umberto Callanti – and his father before him – had served the Barone – and his father before him – for most of his seventy‐nine years. The master’s long dead parent had if anything been even more eccentric than his son – as witness the time he had invited his favourite mule to dinner, entertaining it with a critique (philosophical rather than literary) of La Divina Commedia, with particular reference to Dante’s descent into the Inferno, whilst Umberto’s father served the creature with oats on a chased silver dish. So it would have been difficult to surprise him.
So when the Doctor had politely asked him to bring two beds or couches and place them in the cloister of the rear courtyard, where he appeared to be constructing some sort of wireless apparatus – Umberto’s brother had built one in 1929, so he knew what they looked like – he had contented himself with a request for help. His back was hurting already and he had quite enough on his hands, especially now that the two youngsters had been invited to stay. At least the Signorina had made her own bed.
had done nothing but grumble ever since he was asked to help.
‘Thank you, Umberto, I’m most grateful,’ said the Doctor.
Umberto bowed and departed for the kitchen, waiting until he was safely hidden behind the Doctor’s blue box (which had mysteriously transported itself from the great hall) before he stopped and put his hands on his back to stretch his aching spine.
‘Well, I’m bushed!’ said Jeremy, sitting down on the little low bed he’d just brought down all those stairs. He didn’t get any thanks, he noticed – and he’d had the difficult end too, at the front. And why hadn’t the Brigadier volunteered to give a hand, instead of just hanging around chatting to the Doctor? And where was Sarah, for that matter?
He swung his legs up, lay back and stretched out with a sigh of relief.
What! With all those nasties trying to get at you? Jeremy leapt to his feet and backed away. The Doctor laughed. ‘It’s all right. The power isn’t attached yet.’
Typical, thought Jeremy. Scaring a chap out of his wits just for a joke.
‘One thing I don’t quite understand, Doctor,’ said the Brigadier. ‘Your explanation of ghosts seemed to make a sort of sense, I suppose –’
‘Thank you,’ said the Doctor. Jeremy could see he didn’t like that.
‘Yes, well…’ went on the Brigadier, who was clearly aware that the Doctor wasn’t too chuffed. ‘It’s those beasties. The – ah – the fiends. You seemed to imply that they share N-Space with the spirits who are stuck there. Are we to take it that the expression N-Space is just a euphemism for plain old‐fashioned Hell?’
‘Not exactly,’ said the Doctor. ‘Here, Jeremy, catch hold of this.’ He passed a wire under the pair of beds, came round to take it and threaded it through the tangle of wires climbing up the nearest pillar like the tendrils of a creeping plant.
the situation; and by their clinging to the things they can’t give up, all the cravings and addictions; the repressions and the aversions.’
While he was speaking he repeated his actions. He seemed to be building an untidy cage around the beds, thought Jeremy, scrabbling underneath for the end of the wire.
‘Fear and despair; the anguish of loss; the cankers of envy, hate and greed; all the forms of inturning agony you can think of can cause a person to be stuck. But in the end, most do manage to see what they’re doing to themselves and then they can move on, into the light.’
‘But what about the fiends, Doctor?’
He stopped his work and looked gravely at the Brigadier.
‘The N-Forms. Yes. You know already, Lethbridge‐ Stewart, that the power generated by negative emotion can have enormous potential for evil.’
‘Do I?’ said the Brigadier.
‘It was the force used by the Master to raise the last of the Daemons.’
‘Ah. Yes. Devil’s End. Quite right.’
of negativity generated by all those selves who have managed to quit N-Space?’
‘Not – ah – not good?’
‘Not at all good. Just as the joy of the light is manifest in the shape of angels or devas or whatever, as Sarah was telling us earlier, so the power of the darkness is imaged in the form of fiends.’
Was he telling them that the fiends weren’t really, really real? thought Jeremy. Only images? Sort of projected, like at the pictures, sort of?
‘Ah,’ said the Brigadier, his face clearing. ‘Not real, then. Just the appearance of reality? Right?’
‘Wrong. They’re no less real than all other living beings in the world of appearances. No less an illusion, true, but that’s something else.’
As the Doctor turned away and picked up another coil of wire, Jeremy heard the patter of scurrying feet, ever and anon giving way to a hiccup of a skip, as though the runner was trying to overtake himself.
‘Calm down, Uncle,’ said the Brigadier to the little shock‐headed figure. ‘I take it you mean the Vilmio fellow. Leave it to me. I’ll deal with him.’
He put a comforting hand on the old man’s shoulder and led him away, saying, ‘It might be as well if you kept out of the way. I suggest you go to your room. And don’t worry.’
As the Brigadier made his way via the hall to the entrance lobby below, he heard the jangling of the bell. So he’d arrived had he, he thought grimly, this – this gangster who’d scared the wits out of a helpless old man like a fifth form bully terrorizing a new bug in the playground. He was quite looking forward to meeting him.
He heard the door creak open and the murmur of Umberto’s voice, answered by the rumbling tones of an American: ‘Don’t mess with me, you old bum.’
The Brigadier’s lips tightened and he quickened his step. Again he heard Umberto’s polite murmur and arrived in time to see the giant figure, with an oath, roughly push the old butler aside and advance into the lobby.
collar, silk tie; soft leather moccasins, Gucci probably. Moving on his toes like a boxer…
‘Can I help you?’ he repeated, when he received no answer. The big man had stopped, his arms slightly lifted as if ready for a punch‐up. A surprised frown flicked across his brow.
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Lethbridge‐Stewart,’ replied the Brigadier. ‘I represent my uncle, Mario Verconti.’
‘Old Dopey here takes me for some sort of a mug. He’s been trying to tell me the Barone’s not in the castello.’ The stillness of the man was more menacing than any threatening gesture. The Brigadier unconsciously swayed onto the balls of his feet, ready for a sudden move.
‘Not at home. An accepted fiction in polite society. He is not at home to you, sir.’
He was answered by a growl of anger and a slight twitch of the gloved hand.
‘Thank you, Umberto, that will be all.’
‘I have to tell you, Mr Vilmio, that neither you nor your propositions are welcome. The island of San Stefano Minore is not for sale and there’s an end of it.’
The black brows were lowered even more. ‘You’re wrong, Mr Lethbridge‐Stewart. This is only the beginning. I want this island, this castle; and I’m used to getting what I want. Whatever it takes. You might say that persuasion is my speciality; and I’m good at my job.’
The Brigadier still had not moved. ‘There’s no more to be said. Good day, Mr Vilmio.’
The battered face flushed a darker shade of tan. ‘I’m not one of your goddam servants. You British seem to think you still own the earth. Listen to me, feller. The time will come when your uncle will be on his knees, begging me to allow him to sell me the place.’
Now the Brigadier did move. He crossed to within a couple of feet of the seething Max Vilmio. His face was stem.
‘Yes, I am British, a British officer,’ he said. ‘What’s more, I happen to be a representative of the United Nations. Even if I weren’t involved personally, I should feel it my duty on both counts to oppose the threats of scum like you.’
The Brigadier watched him until he had crossed the bailey, passed through the main gate and turned the corner by the orange grove before he gently closed the door and allowed himself to feel the fear.
Sarah hardly seemed to welcome Jeremy’s offer of help, when he arrived in the dusty library bitterly complaining that the Doctor had sent him away ‘with a flea in his ear, just for dropping an amplifier thingy when it was hardly his fault there were wires all over the place, now was it?’
She looked up from the heavy leather‐covered book she was studying. ‘I’ve never been able to work out what fleas have got to do with ears,’ she said vaguely, and returned to her book. Jeremy wandered across and peered over her shoulder. Solid Latin. What was the point of having a book in Latin?
‘What’s the point of having a book all in Latin?’ he said.
‘You’re as bad as Alice,’ said Sarah, ‘“What’s the use of a book without pictures and conversations?” It’s very interesting, as a matter of fact. A medieval “Lives of the Princes of Calabria”. Not much help, though.’
‘Well, you’ve certainly been jabbering away to the jolly old wopperoos for the last few days as if you were a senorita yourself.’
‘The word is signorina,’ she said, ‘and I suggest you find something useful to do instead of making racist remarks.’
Back on the elder sister kick, was she? She was no fun at all when she got onto that. He turned away and surveyed the shelves which covered the walls from floor to ceiling, stacked solid, and the books for which there was no room piled on the floor. There must have been thousands of books.
‘Alice who?’ he said.
But Sarah had turned to the next book in her pile and was already immersed. Jeremy climbed on to the bottom step of the mahogany stepladder fitted with wheels (the only way to reach the highest shelves) and leaned on the little platform at the top.
‘What are we supposed to be doing, anyway?’
‘Does it say anything about her topping herself?’ ‘Er, no. That’s all.’
So what had that got to do with the price of coconuts? Showing off again, that’s all she was doing. ‘That in Latin too?’
Six
‘Serendipity,’ said the Doctor. ‘As pretty an example as I’ve come across in a century of blue moons.’
‘Not synchronicity?’ said Sarah, a trifle crestfallen. ‘That too. It must mean we’re on the right track.’ ‘Going with the flow?’ said Jeremy with a chortle. ‘If you like.’
The Doctor had read the words on the piece of vellum (for that’s what he said it was) and pronounced them an extract from an alchemical text – ‘Not one I’m familiar with, though’ – dating from the early middle ages.
‘Thank you, Sarah,’ he had said when she first gave it to him, taking a small book from his breast pocket and laying the fragment between its pages. ‘This could prove invaluable. Well done.’
‘Er… Actually, Doctor, it was sort of me who found it. In a way.’ And Jeremy explained about the accident; and that was when the Doctor called it serendipity.
‘But what is it, serendipity? What does it mean?’ said Jeremy.
who seems to have got all the credit – what was her name? Ann, wasn’t it? Yes, of course, Ann, In fact Harry published
The Castle of Otranto the year Ann was born. Pretty girl. Bright too. Much too good for that boor Radcliffe.
As the Doctor was speaking, he was connecting a thick cable coming from the TARDIS to the strange looking apparatus he had constructed by the beds. Although it was basically electronic, Sarah could see within its depths some odd articles which seemed to be quite out of place. There was a coiled seashell, for example, of a nacreous blue; a peeled, hard‐boiled egg (surely not!) with a metal knitting‐ needle stuck through it; and, just visible deep, deep inside, staring balefully out at her (it seemed), the skull of some sort of rodent, probably a rat.
‘Ann Radcliffe?’ whispered Jeremy to Sarah. ‘Wasn’t that the name on that book?’
‘Ah, Brigadier,’ said the Doctor, ‘you’re just in time. I’ve just finished. It’s all ready.’
‘Is it indeed?’ said the Brigadier. ‘And what do you call that?’
The Doctor laughed. ‘There you go again. Isn’t it more important to know what it does?’
